Double edged sword...

It certainly has great promise for spinal injuries and amputees but if DARPA is involved their already wondering if this can be used for torture without "physical" harm. I hope someone involved with the design of these neural interfaces has the sense to release an easy hack for them that would install something of a limiter on data coming from various sensors.

Either that or one can hope that a mental training regiment will be developed to help soldiers tune out the sensory data coming from these interfaces making it all but useless for the would be malicious side of such tech.

Speaking of which I got the impression these interfaces were hard wired. So I suppose it'll be some time before we have to worry overly much about big brother. :P

Of course on the vein of cybersex there will undoubtedly be some who are excited over the prospect of other side of the coin.

Re: How long until a company patents the 5 senses?

Re: Double edged sword...

I've often wondered why there aren't more exo-devices for people with spinal injuries that affect the upper limbs. You'd think it'd be an easier project than fitting an amputee with a whole new arm.

> How long until a company patents the 5 senses?

Thing is, what we generally lump together as touch - the skin senses - are in fact a complex array of different sensory receptors positioned at varying depths in the skin. Not the easiest thing to duplicate.

the ghost of the machine

Imagine if we could connect to a robot hand over the net and get real feedback , I would have it installed in all our engineering sections so I could smack'em hard every time the push out rubbish.

But think of this in the corporate 2.0 society we live in , doctors doing remote surgery over the net with a real sense of touch and feedback, artists, musicians the possibilities of remote performance would be endless, the robot is dead long live the net bound Cyborg. don't fear A.I 2.0 ...we are it.

Related?

I saw some mainstream media reports that a doctor is ready to do an experimental human head transplant. I'm wondering if the Borg can be far behind in all this?

All in all, with recent advances such as osseointegration and now this, it could make life for amputees and the spinal cord injured a lot better. The only hang up, as always, is cost and insurance companies as many of them still claim that micro-processor knees are "experimental" and won't cover them.